


sleep well, judas

by owedbetter



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Grief/Mourning, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 12:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13524669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owedbetter/pseuds/owedbetter
Summary: "Thoughts were always harder to kill, memories always harder to destroy. They stayed like ghosts—unfinished business, never letting the wicked sleep. Some people called it a conscience."Billy Russo deals with the day the Castles died.





	sleep well, judas

“ _Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer._ ”

\- Matthew 26:46

 

* * *

 

He rubbed his red hands raw.

The water, running swift from the tap, was hotter than hell against his skin. It stung the cuts and still healing wounds between his fingers. It felt like a stab that just kept going and he’d known the kiss of a blade too often to know what it felt like. The soap had long since sunk down the drain but he kept his hands under the hot water, inviting the burn.

Still, he could not get his fingers to forget the feeling of Lisa and Frank Jr. Castle’s hands – soft, untainted, innocent. Everything he never got to be.

Billy Russo kept washing his hands. Deadly and steady with a sniper, with a knife, with a ballpoint pen if necessary – but, for the life of him, he could not stop shaking. He took one deep breath – two, three, four. Counting, breathing, gritting his teeth. Air around him, thick as spilled blood. He swallowed, tasting rust.

The racing heart in his chest would not quieten – each beat was a blink of Frankie Junior’s eyes, a flash of Maria Castle’s smile, a reminder of Lisa Castle’s laugh.

A raw fist to the glass, its shatter echoed his grunt in this empty apartment. Blood on his knuckles, blood where the shards managed to pierce his skin. He looked at the mirror, a fractured reflection, and for a moment, he tried to remember who the _fuck_ he was.

 _William “Billy” Russo_ , he said to himself as he spat onto the sink, expecting red but seeing nothing. _You’re Billy Russo_.

 _And this isn’t you—you don’t get_ soft _._

_Like Frankie did._

_And look where it got_ him _._

“Billy?” said a woman on his bed, her voice slurred from alcohol, sex, and sleep. His neck might have snapped from the speed with which he turned his head. His eyes widened.

Right. He _wasn’t_ alone.

His apartment wasn’t empty.

A rookie mistake, uncharacteristic for someone as meticulous and methodical as him. The carelessness spoke volumes of the chaos in the recesses of his mind. Call him without conscience or heart, call him a traitor and the worst of all humanity; he would not correct you. Still, he was _human_.

And details were easy to miss when there were still hurricanes and shipwrecks in your veins.

He heard the woman attempt to sit up. He shed the skin of contemplation as easily as blood and the expression on his face became the picture of calm.

“Yeah?” he called out, voice measured as ever. Not a note out of place. Nothing in his lilt suggested his boiling blood. A charmer and a snake, through and through. He stilled, attentive, as he listened to her light movements against his sheets.

Slow and sluggish, he noted. It made his lip twitch, smug. The memories of what had just been minutes ago came flooding back.

The sleep after they’d both passed out had made him stupid. But, to his defense, he had been _anything_ but gentle and slow with this woman—this woman whose name he did not quite care to remember right then. And by the bruises he saw on his neck and the phantom ghost of lingering scratches he felt on his bare back, he supposed she didn’t exactly have the best day either.

Not that it mattered to him—nothing ever did.

“Is everything okay?” she said sweetly, softly groaning as she struggled to try to sit up.

Her accent was British — _English_ , to be precise. Billy smirked at the recollection of her as he remembered more and more. Her face, her dimples, the low register of her voice when she moaned his name in bliss. Billy licked his lips.

“It’s fine, sweetheart. Go back to sleep,” he said, his voice low with a learned charm. She didn’t and couldn’t see the tension he kept in his arms.

He heard a soft sigh pass from her lips, followed by the soft thud of her head against his pillow, and she said no more, slipping back into exhausted slumber.

Billy walked from where he’d been in the bathroom to see her and saw her bare back facing him, the pale moonlight casting shadows against her skin. Her breath was slow and steady. Already asleep again. Honesty then crept back into him as he relaxed into a posture that felt more natural—controlled and defensive.

Ready to strike at any given moment.

It was simply the way he was, for as long as he could remember. You drop off a kid at an orphanage and abandon him on paper, what _else_ could he have become?

He walked back to his now broken bathroom mirror and saw his cracked reflection on the glass. The water was still running. Steam rose from his sink, making the glass as cloudy as a blind man’s eye. And without warning, her voice came back to his head—not the woman’s, but a child’s.

Lisa.

" _If you were an orphan, how'd you know you were named after Billy the Kid?_ "

He grunted and shook his head, trying to shake it off. Billy flexed his fingers—open, close into fists. But there was nothing to beat down, nothing to fight. Thoughts were always harder to kill, memories always harder to destroy.

They stayed like ghosts—unfinished business, never letting the wicked sleep.

Some people called it a conscience.

Billy shut the water off and stepped into the shower. He shut the frosted glass door. When he turned the knob, the water was still cold against his skin and he groaned when it hit his body. He grit his teeth and let the water wash over him, feeling the water slowly get warmer and warmer by the second. He closed his eyes and sighed.

His fingers still hadn’t stopped shaking.

He had already tried everything that night to erase the memories of the day. Tough workout at a gym to try and sweat it out of his skin. Hard liquor at the bar to try and drown the thoughts from his mind. Hot, rough sex with a beautiful woman just to get out of his own head. And it all worked for a little while.

But the day just kept coming back him when it got too quiet and the silence got too loud.

For all of his sins, even those who’d sold their souls to the Devil were not exempt from feeling the loss of it. A phantom conscience. His was a hard heart, a dark heart—but the thing is he’d _had_ one at some point before he sold it. Meagre and broken and filthy as it was, it had cared for something. And how it ached now at the thought of what he’d done.

Because the Castles died earlier that day— _and he was there._

He hadn’t pulled the trigger—the only kindness, he thought, that he’d afforded them in that moment—but he had been there. He’d been with them, just before it happened.

As he stood in his shower, he turned his back to the hot water. Hot water against his skin again and it stung. Hurt, from the open wounds in his skin from the way he remembered the woman clawing at him just a few minutes ago. He liked the sting. He looked at his knuckles—bruised and bloodied, with peeks of white from the skin with open wounds, still healing. He hissed at the sensation and swallowed thick air, allowing memories to flood his mind, hoping that the only way to get past this denial of guilt… was through it.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re _sick_. I won’t do this,” he said.

They were in Agent Orange’s office—sophisticated and utterly forgettable. It looked just like every other office of some powerful dean or professor in some uppity, bourgeoisie bullshit Ivy League school. It spoke of power—the dark polished wood, the identical, leatherbound books on the shelves that no one ever read—and of secrecy.

It looked like every other office that spoke of men like him and yet, it said nothing of him at all. He hated it. He envied it.

His name was William Rawlins—another Bill, just like him.

But the plan that had been laid before him was not something he had ever anticipated. As selfish as he knew himself to be, even this was a plan he deemed despicable.

In the back of his mind, he wished he never came by.

He wanted to leave this part of him behind. Rebuild himself into a man he’d have been proud to be—someone his mother might have stayed for, once upon a time. But he was here, last hum of a heart barely clinging to him, and this was where William Russo died. His blood ran thick with the sins he was about to commit and hot with the kiss of hell he was condemning himself to.

Oh, but not yet. _Not yet._

Because he might have been good once. He might have been good _then,_ right there in that moment when Rawlins posed the plan to him in the first place. If he’d done the right thing. But, he of hindsight pondered, that every man had a price for which he’s willing to sell his soul. If they were all going towards a bleak nothingness after this life in the first place—he might as well know what it felt like to live in the light.

(And oh, how the fires of hell were so bright and inviting at the entrance.)

 “With all due respect, _sir_ ,” he spat the word. Jaw, clenched. “Frank Castle’s my brother. And _his_ family’s _my_ family.”

Rawlins, with his one cloudy eye, didn’t even blink. The fucker smirked, even, in an expression Billy knew he’d worn one too many times.

“Funny,” he sneered. “You think he’d say the same for you?”

 _He would,_ Billy knew to himself immediately. _Frank absolutely would._

But Rawlins kept going.

“After all, if this tape of Castle had gotten out before we got to it— _everyone_ in Cerberus will be in the shit. Any hope you had to get your little… _bodyguard_ business off the ground?” he said. Billy tensed and held his breath. “It’d all be gone. And you’d have _nothing._ ”

Billy felt his resolve sinking in the words. It was a lie, he knew, for Frank would never betray him. Frank Castle was the most loyal, steadfast, uncompromising motherfucker he’d ever met in his entire goddamn life.

But Frank Castle had a family. Frank Castle had something to go back to, even if everything fell apart. If they all rotted in prison, Maria would visit him. Lisa and Frankie would write him little letters and cards, make him little drawings. When he eventually got out on good behavior, Frank would have _something_. Because Frank Castle was _clean_ in every way that mattered.

He grit his teeth, dark eyes unblinking. He couldn’t speak. Would not give Rawlins the fucking satisfaction.

“You think Castle will protect you? Take you in?” his superior went on. “You know I don’t take no for an answer, Russo.”

“So, what’re you gonna do… _sir?_ ” said Billy. He licked his lips and cocked a brow. His eyes made a quick sweep over the room. Years of training and expertise gave him the knowledge of his security detail with a single glance. Difficult – even he couldn’t get out of a firefight like the scenario in his head without getting a few scratches in – but not something he couldn’t get out of.

“Kill me?” Billy challenged. “Go on. I’m not armed—” A lie. “— _I’m_ good but even I couldn’t take on your boys with just two hands.” _Lie, lie, lie._ But how it slipped so easily from his tongue. Like honey. Like gold. He went on, “What’re you still keeping me around for, huh?”

“Bull _shit_. And you know it.” said Rawlins, calling his bluff. He rested against his desk, hands on the table, and surveyed the former Marine. Unperturbed.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. After a while, a crooked, smug smile appeared on Rawlins’ face. He raised a hand and waved a finger at him. “You know, Russo… you’re a man who knows his worth. Every man’s got his price and _you’re_ waiting to see what you can get out of this. How do _you_ come up on top? You’re still waiting for the endgame. And I like that about you. I respect that. Man to man.”

He did not let the compliment get to him. He learnt a long time ago not that sweet words from the lips of men are often double-edged swords. And Billy Russo is a man who never went anywhere without a blade. He shrugged and kept a neutral face. And he waited for the point.

_Calculating._

“Castle is… he’s a liability. He’s gone _soft._ And that’s… that’s trouble, my friend,” said Rawlins. “And what means trouble for me… means trouble for _you_.”

“Is that _really_ the angle you’re going for?” said Billy, Brooklyn-lilt loud and pronounced.

“Oh, come on. What’s a couple of kids and some woman, huh?” Rawlins bellowed, slamming his palm on the desk. “You’re not seeing the bigger picture, Russo! My help, my connections—we could _get_ you places!

“’Cause come on. It’s not like _you’re_ clean,” he continued, gesturing vaguely towards him. He paused and eyed him up and down. “How would you come out of this if Kandahar went public? And you _know_ Castle’ll try again. You know he will.”

There it was.

The point.

The video, if released, would condemn them all. Still, there was some loyalty left in him. Some heart left – a flickering, dying flame. But still lit.

“You’ve had it out for Frank since he took your goddamn eye out—” he growled.

“And I’m going to take out him and his entire _fucking_ family before I let him take everything I’ve ever worked for down!” Rawlins retorted. “So, that… leaves _you_.”

“I already told you—” said Billy, but the other man cut him off.

“And fine. I hear you,” he said, raising his hands as if gesturing for a wild animal to calm down. Appeasing it. But Rawlins was a hunting kind of man—and Billy was not a beast who could be tamed by any hands but his own.

“I’m not unreasonable,” said Rawlins. “But here’s the thing, Bill. Now, _you_ know.” Billy swallowed. “If Castle moves, if I get any kind of inclination that you so much as implied _any_ of this to Castle… I’ll destroy you. Every measly, pathetic thing you’ve ever built—I will _ruin_ you. And then, when you have nothing—when you have _less_ than nothing… _then_ … then, I’ll kill you. And you know I can because I’m still the guy who points. And you either shoot or get shot.

“So, you… you think about that,” the older man threatened, a small smile on his thin lips. “You think about what it is you’re owed and what you want out of this godforsaken life of yours.”

“You have nothing I want,” Billy spat.

“I have the rest of your life,” he replied without missing a beat. “I have everything— _everything_ you’ve ever wanted since your mother signed that termination of parental rights form when you were five. _Me_ …? I have a future where you’re _worth_ something,” William Rawlins spat out.

All he could focus on was that fucking cloudy, unseeing eye as Rawlins gave him a once over and Billy’s shoulders tensed. His eyes darkened, rage controlled as his blood boiled. He could feel the want for his hands to ball into fists and his arms stiffened and shook. He grit his teeth together; the pressure hurt the back of his jaw. Part of him wondered if the force of his contained rage could be enough to make his molars crack and break.  

“If Cerberus gets out, you become nothing. If you betray me, I’ll make sure you turn into less than nothing and you’d be wishing you were never born to your crackwhore mother. And the only way to get anything out of this… is if you do as I say,” Rawlins continued. “You don’t have to pull the trigger. That’s fine. I won’t ask a brother to kill a brother, I’ll give you that. But you breathe a word of this…”

“I get it,” Billy said quietly.

“You get it,” he repeated. “So, does that mean we have an agreement?”

Rawlins looked at him then, as calm as an ocean with shipwrecks and corpses of drowned sailors underneath. He’d drowned them all—he would drown him too, Billy knew, but he’d always known how to swim these treacherous waters.

Trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. Absolute certain death for all or sacrifice a few lives to save himself.

Billy thought of his brother—of his brother, Frank Castle, who trusted him. Who took him into his home and fed him, introduced him to his wife and children, housed him. Loved him like family, like blood.

Frank Castle would have died for him, he knew that. Carla Russo loved him too, at some point. His mother loved him—and his mother left him. So _what_ if Frank and the Castles loved him too?

What the _fuck_ did love have anything to do with it and him anyway?

Love was never going to be enough.

He thought of how, when he was only five, his mother had chosen those little white lines over him.

If it came down to it, Frank would choose his family over him. His family would choose Frank over him. In the end, there was not a soul alive who would choose him for anything or anyone else – except him.

This was a Gordian knot of his own design and he considered it. Rawlins was not a man he swore allegiance to, not by any means, but the man made some sense. Self-made men knew their own kind. If he died and if he were ruined for the Castles and Frank released the footage anyway, what would have been the point in any of it all?

For the sake of doing the right thing? When had that ever mattered in this fucked up world of gods and monsters, when he was always going to be the same goddamn thing.

In the end, he told himself while in that shower, he’d had no other choice.

William “Billy” Russo chose himself.

Nobody else will.

“Yeah,” he said, curt and unsmiling. Signing over his soul.

To a god he didn’t quite believe in, some part of his heart prayed its apologies, before the last flicker of light left him. The blood in his veins felt dirty and spilled.

But Rawlins smiled – grinned a fucking Cheshire grin. Like a cat that got the cream.

“Good man,” he said, nodding.

“When?” Billy asked.

“The less you know—”

“ _When?_ ” he prodded, eyes like starless midnight. Devoid of heart and colour.

Rawlins pressed his lips together and looked to consider it. Then, he shrugged as if brushing off a fallen leaf from his shoulder. As if they were planning fucking brunch or some shit.

“You know how Castle always went on about their little trips to the park on a very specific kind of day? The fair with that ride his kids like—what was it called, the ponies?”

“The painted ponies.”

“Yeah, those. There,” he said. “And then.”

“ _Jesus,_ ” he muttered under his breath, pocketing his gloved fists into his coat pockets. Heat threatened to spill behind his eyes and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He swallowed.

“Oh, you’ll get your thirty pieces of silver. I’ll make sure of it,” said Rawlins. He approached the younger man and reached up to give his stubble-ridden face a condescending pat. Billy didn’t try to stop him. “You’re still my favourite poster boy, Beaut. Just keep your mouth shut. Hate to see something happen to that pretty face you love so much.”

“I’m going with them,” said Bill.

“What?”

“To the park,” he said. “Lisa and Frankie, they—they asked me to go with them that day.”

“Huh,” Rawlins considered. He paused for a moment and walked to his nondescript bookshelves, lined with leatherbound titles that never mattered and would never be read. A show for a show. He shrugged.

“Okay,” he finally agreed. “Sure. Let you say goodbye. And make sure they’re in position.”

“No comms. Frank’s too smart for that.”

“Of course.”

“And don’t—” he tried to say. Rawlins shot him a look. “They’re just kids.”

Don’t draw it out. Make it quick. An honourable death for them all.

At least, then, when they passed—they’ll never know the hurt of his betrayal.

They’d all die believing the best of him. At least someone would.

The words between the lines did not fall on deaf ears. The look Rawlins gave him then—Billy could have fucking blinded his good eye for the way he looked at him with an expression he could only describe as _patronizing_. He knew he was betraying the Castles but that did not make him needlessly cruel. And the look on Rawlins’ face, as if he’d just begged for their mercy…

As if he were being called soft—he was _not_ soft.

Hadn’t he just proved that?

Billy could have spat at him.

“Sure. ‘Course,” said his superior. “I’m not a _monster_. Just one to the head. They won’t feel a thing. Won’t even know what hit ‘em.” He grinned at that. Billy could have been sick; he only sneered. Rawlins added, “Are we in agreement?”

“I have my orders,” said Billy. “But remember, I’m not doing this for _you._ ”

“Excellent,” said William. “I see bright things in your future. I’ll make sure of it.”

 

* * *

  

Billy stepped out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist. His slick black hair, dripping wet. The shower hadn’t washed anything away but away from the steam, he found he could breathe again.

Away from the memories that could compromise this future he’d bought himself with his soul.

He was greeted by the sight of a woman sitting up on his bed, struggling to get dressed. Billy smirked as she realised that he’d torn her dress apart—right down the middle. Her name was Clara, he remembered. He smiled in a way he knew she’d find charming.

He slipped into this skin too easily.

“Hey,” she greeted him, a smile on her lips. She was cute, he thought, what with her dimples. Swift recollections flitted through his mind’s eye—the look on her face when she devoured him with only her eyes, the look of bliss on her face when she begged. He wouldn’t have minded seeing her again. But he won’t.

“Hey,” he replied. “You want a shirt?”

“Won’t you miss it?”

“Nah,” he said, picking up his discarded pale green shirt.

When she put it on over her ruined dress, he added the grey jacket he’d put on earlier that day over her shoulders as well. She might have thought him sweet for it and she did, for she smiled at him and how there wasn’t a trace of distrust in those big brown eyes of hers—she didn’t have to know this was a snake shedding his sins.

What reminded him of them, anyway.

She flipped her brown hair into place. He sat down on his bed and he pulled her to him by her hand. She didn’t resist. He would not admit he just wanted the feeling of smaller hand in his again, soft fingers between his calloused ones.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked as she looked down at him. She put a hand against his face and knit her brows together.

He realised then, from the look of concern on her face, that his smile for her had slipped. He was scowling. Billy shook it off and arranged his features just so again. She didn’t care, not really. He wouldn’t give her the chance to.

“Yeah,” he said. Another easy lie.

He reached up to her standing over him and he tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

“I’ll, uh—” he started, resting a hand against her soft, warm dimpled cheek. “I’ll call you.”

She made a sound between a hum and a laugh, smiling.

“You do that,” she said.

They both knew he wouldn’t.

She kissed him goodbye, collected the rest of her things, and walked herself out. He didn’t bother getting up. He simply sat back and watched her.

“Take care of yourself,” she said, just as she was about to close the door.

Billy Russo smirked and said, “I always do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pretend "the woman" is Clara Oswald from Doctor Who because I want a Mr and Mrs Smith remake starring Ben Barnes and Jenna Coleman. Let me have this.
> 
> But anyway, I hope y'all liked this thing I wrote for everyone's favourite hated lasagna man. Let me know what you think!


End file.
